Is Vilyuisk encephalitis a viral disease?

10 February 2011

A type of human encephalitis – an infection of the brain – has been known to affect the indigenous people living in the Sakha Republic of Russia since the mid-1800s. The available clinical and epidemiological evidence suggests that the disease is caused by a pathogen, but proving this has been difficult.

The disease is called Vilyuisk encephalitis (VE) due to its prevalence in the Vilyui River Valley. After an outbreak of VE in the 1950s, when 1% of the local population was affected, clinical aspects of the disease were carefully documented by the Russian health ministry. VE is a progressive neurological disorder with acute, subacute, and chronic presentations. Acute disease begins with fever, chills, headache, vomiting and rapid progression to confusion, quadraparesis and death within a few months, with 15% mortality. Subactue VE begins in a similar manner, followed by remission, and then the return of neurological symptoms including spastic paralysis and dementia. The mean duration of illness of 3.5 years. Chronic VE is a long-term form of subacute VE with no acute phase.

It is not known how VE is transmitted among the indigenous Sakha. Most live in wooden huts with no sanitary facilities; running water is available only after the spring thaw (May – August) when the snows melt. Why the onset of VE coincides with the subsequent increase in outdoor activities such as fishing, hunting, and herding cattle, is not understood.

The Sakha Republic is located north of the trans-Siberian railway and several degrees south of the Arctic circle. It is a harsh environment where winter temperatures are −40 degrees F, and there are no roads or railways allowing travel to the rest of Russia. These conditions may in part explain why the disease has not spread extensively. In the 1980s the disease moved south as the indigenous people migrated towards the regional capital of Yakutsk, where VE had never been observed.

Attempts to identify a viral etiology of VE were carried out in Moscow in 1954-57 by inoculating blood, stool, nasopharyngeal, cerebrospinal fluid and brain samples from VE patients into mice. Eleven virus isolates were obtained, and one, now called Vilyuisk human encephalitis virus (VHEV), which originated from CSF, has been the most studied. Sequence analyses have revealed that VHEV is related to Theiler’s murine encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV), a member of the picornavirus family that also includes poliovirus. TMEV is a natural pathogen of mice, in which it causes a persistent infection of the central nervous system. This property of TMEV was consistent with the pathogenesis of VE in humans. However, VHEV has not been identified in any other patient with VE, and may be a laboratory contaminant that originated from the mice used to isolate the virus.

More recently, Theiler-like viruses have been isolated from humans. The first, called Saffold virus (SAFV), was isolated in 1981 from an 8 month old infant with fever of undetermined origin. The second was isolated 25 years later from the nasopharynx of a 23 month old infant. Subsequent epidemiological studies have revealed that SAFV-like viruses are ubiquitous human viruses that infect during early childhood. These findings suggest that VHEV is a human virus, and not a laboratory contaminant. Whether VHEV causes Vilyuisk encephalitis remains to be determined.

There has been little progress in research on VE, mainly as a consequence of the remote location of the Sakha Republic, and the decline in resources for VE surveillance. If these obstacles could be overcome, here are some of the important questions about the disease that should be answered:

Does the disease continue to affect residents of the remaining small villages in the region?

Do patients with VE have antibodies to VHEV or other viruses?

Can viruses be isolated from VE patients using cell culture?

Can viral nucleic acids be identified in clinical specimens from VE patients?

Some of these questions are being addressed by neurologist Howard L. Lipton in work supported by the US National Institutes of Health.

If I were you I would be sick of hearing lay opinions on potential virus causation of ME (“CFS”), especially in response to a seemingly unrelated post of yours. Sorry. But it seems to me that cardioviruses (the viruses discussed in this post) and closely related enteroviruses are, next to retroviruses, the likeliest cause of ME. The pathology associated with cardioviruses are (often chronic) encephalomyelitis and myocarditis, just as in ME. Enteroviruses have been strongly associated with ME by British researchers and Dr. Chia; and the post-polio syndrome is generally recognized as a form of ME. I’d love to see funding from NIH for research in this area. Any musings on this?

Luke

Huh? What does this blog post have to do with CFS or your comment?

Justin Reilly

Chronic VE strikes me as being a form of or extremely closely related to ME (‘CFS’). And ME is the topic of probably 90% or more of posts on the blog in general, so it seems readers of the blog have a strong interest in it. Again, for those with no interest in ME, apologies.

Justin Reilly, esq.

sorry, I meant ME is prob the subject of 90% or more of reader comments (not posts) on the blog.